Sunday October 15

Day 9. 

Nine days of constantly refreshing news updates, of this queasy feeling in my stomach, of trying not to cry or vomit at every image splashed across my screen, of furious typing, of long periods staring at the sea; of sadness, frustration, anger, revulsion, fear, pain, indignation, incredulity. Sadness. Instead of sunshine streaming through my breakfast this morning, rain pelted the windows and wind shrieked through the water tanks and solar panels on the rooftops and balconies around me. Soaked Israeli flags droop on the beach. No surfers, no kayaks, no swimmers or fishermen this morning while I write this.

But also: nine days of texts, calls, emails and messages from dozens of people wishing me well, urging me to stay safe, wiping tears on camera, trying to understand, trying to support me, trying to find words. Telling me that I am in their thoughts, that I am helping them to understand, that I am helping give voice to what they are feeling, that I am helping them to see and to learn. Telling me that I’m making a difference. I hope you all know how much of a difference you are making for me.

The rain slows and then stops, and the roiling waves settle. Shrieks turn to whispers and then silence. Thick, dark grey clouds hang low over the water and contrast with lighter, whiter ones above where the sun is peeking through, just a little. My app says it’s supposed to rain all day, and tomorrow too, but the growing blue in the sky gives me hope. I turn to research and write about BDS.

I emerged from that big dark rat hole and despite the lingering clouds, in a bright show of strength the sun was defying my weather app and filling the room. After lunch, my daughter and I took a walk on the beach together. The wind was still whipping the water into a frenzy and howling around us, and while fishermen were few and swimmers were absent, windsurfers and para-surfers were out in force, spinning in the air and gliding over the waves in a fantastic show. I wish I knew how to post video here because the still photos don’t quite capture it, but I will include some below anyway.

I spoke to my brother while I sat and watched them racing on top of the water. His question wrenched my attention away from the reds and greens and oranges of their sails. He asked me: if I hadn’t been here when Hamas invaded on Saturday – if I had been at home in my normal routine and only read it in the news as something happening far away – would it have affected me the same way? Would it have turned my life and thoughts around as completely as it has? This was a question that had skirted around the edges of my consciousness this week but now I pulled it to the front and seriously considered it. I said, I hope that the answer would be yes. I ran through in my mind all of the things I'd seen and heard, all of the pain and horror leaping out of the news, all of my friends here - none of whom are untouched, every one of whom has a loved one either dead, missing, injured, or fighting on the front lines -- and then I said, with more certainty, yes. Even if the massacres had happened so far away, when the photos and videos started coming out, and then the anti-Israel tweets and rallies were called up in full force, and then the Day of Rage was planned – yes. Definitely. 

Thinking that an Iranian-backed terrorist organization had planned and executed mass torture, rape, murder, and destruction – as awful and horrific as it was – was one thing. I knew the IDF would be able to muster a response, and that like previous attacks on Israel – even though this was something on a whole other level – Israel would defend herself. But seeing the barbaric slaughter, seeing -- finally, in clear and unequivocal terms -- that the leaders and supporters of the Free Palestine movement were unable and unwilling to separate such monstrous acts of terror from legitimate attempts to secure better lives for Palestinians; watching them tweet that “the Jews” deserved this, hearing them chant “from the river to the sea” and “gas the Jews” around the entire world – yeah, I think that would have done it.

I have long been aware that there was a fuzzy line between the ideal of freeing Palestine and the hatred of Jews and delegitimation of our claims on this land. But I guess I hadn’t ever really been faced so starkly with as clear an image of just how deeply entrenched the hatred of Jews had become in causes for social justice across the board. All the rhetoric on the part of the media, unions, students, and social justice movements, and even some of my colleagues, had seemed to be just that: rhetoric designed to demonstrate sympathy and support for such innocuous and worthwhile causes as freedom of speech and universal human dignity. I hadn’t really paid attention to the basic conflation of terrorist entities and freedom-fighters that had become part of their ideology, or the complete lack of understanding and total ignorance of even the most basic historical facts that underlay it. In hindsight, especially as an historian familiar with the history of attempts at Jewish extermination for as long as there have been Jews, this was just stupid and blind. The overlap between freeing Palestine and Judenrein was there all along. I just didn’t want to see it because maybe I didn’t want to have to feel responsible for doing anything about it.

My brother and I talked about a variety of things that I’ve been writing about this week. He told me that I shouldn’t feel responsible for not countering all of this rhetoric before because, as I myself had written a few days ago, when “truths” are easy and so often repeated, why would anybody really want to take in anything else? He didn’t think the problem could be solved by trying to counter decades of anti-Israel propaganda by simply explaining what is actually going on, because most people aren't interested in thinking too deeply about things when what to think has already been handed to them. And he said that the choice to support Hamas is ultimately an emotional one, and not a rational one. He gave the example of all of the studies that have been done and advertised in plain sight, published in popular magazines and in best-selling books, about how unhealthy fast food is, about how it’s overburdening health systems and killing people every day; yet people still choose to order their Big Macs and fries. Why? Because they like McDonald’s. It’s easy to pick up on the way home and it keeps the kids happy. "I get it," I told him. But, I said, it’s not only that it’s easy to ignore the truth and order a Big Mac; as you said, it’s the fact that they like it that is what really determines what they choose to put in their bodies. It’s emotional, not rational. So how does that work with the Hamas analogy, other than to underline that people simply like to hate and blame the Jews? Does that make it any less of a deliberate choice?

My distraction with the conversation caused me to stand a little too close to the rocks at that point, and salt-water sprayed up and soaked the bottom of my shorts. I moved away, but the wind now made my wet leg cold, so as I hung up the phone I turned back and headed toward the apartment.

And now as I look back out the same window as I did this morning, and at the clouds gathering again for what the weather app says will be a thunderstorm tonight, I’m thinking about what I’m doing here, and why I’m continuing to write this stuff instead of all of the other projects from a lifetime ago that I’m supposed to be working on. Maybe in the end, I can’t really push against the tide; I can’t stop the thousands who want me dead from singing it at the top of their lungs or praising Hitler, or defending the live-streamed decapitation of Jewish babies and rapes of Jewish women, or even from spreading lies across social media and the internet, or publishing half-truths and morally relativistic defenses of mass murder in news outlets. But if you’re reading this and you’re reading the posts I’ve researched and written here, if you’re learning anything new, if you’re understanding a different position a little more clearly, then maybe you’ll tell someone else, sometime. Maybe you’ll clarify something for them that they didn’t know. Maybe I've made it a little less easy for you, and you'll make it a little less easy for them, and someone at some point will understand that their choice to work toward the destruction of Israel is not based on reason, and has done nothing to help the Palestinians. Maybe some people some time will take a minute to look things up for themselves, and choose a salad instead of a Big Mac once in a while. So I'll keep writing. Maybe I can be a splash of water against the rocks, and at least wet the bottom of your shorts.